


Quantum Rebirth

by aggressive_pepsi



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: Other, Wow something I didnt abandon after half a chapter!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-18 18:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggressive_pepsi/pseuds/aggressive_pepsi
Summary: There are millions upon millions of timelines and realities that all center on the same handful of stories. Here's the story of just one(?) of them.





	1. Prologue

It was blood, and fear, and so much darkness. He could feel the atoms of the world being ripped apart as he stood there, unable to do anything about it..

Benjamin Kondraki was never one to turn away from danger, even if he knew damn well he was very likely about to get killed. In some ways, that almost made him run towards it more. But Ben had never, actually, died. But in this moment, with breaths coming heavy, bodies scattered around him like fallen leaves in the deep throes of autumn, he believed he just might.

They had been tracking the bender for no more than a week before it struck.It moved fast, undetectable until it was far too late.It was a beast that none had ever imagined before, something stronger than any records showed was possible. Whole cities left as craters, nations plunged into chaos.

The entity, because there was no human left inside the creature, didn’t wish reality to bend to its will. It wasn’t looking for its own goal, wasn’t seeking power. It wasn’t seeking the typical chaos that one normally attributed to a godkid. It lusted, thirsted for nothing but pain and suffering. It wanted to rip everything apart. And it had more than the firepower to do so. 

There was no other choice than to face the beast head on. Even if there was nothing they could do.

And so, Benjamin Kondraki stood, staring down an ever shifting mass of eyes and hate and death, and inside he saw Everything and Nothing all at once. It choked his breath, like thick heavy tar in his lungs. He felt like gravity was pressing him down into the ground, as if he was being ripped from his body as it crumpled like a discarded beer can. Still, he stood on his feet as it slithered closer, moving in unnaturally perfect ways.

It laughed, and Kondraki felt blood fill his mouth and eyes and run out of his ears, and still he struggled to breathe. There was the sound of the facility behind him crashing, crumbling under the mere pressure of this entity existing in proximity. Kondraki registered it in his mind but didn’t hear it right; it sounded like the distant rumble of a blown out speaker as the beast slowly advanced on him. He gasped for breath, and tried to reach for his gun. But his arms wouldn’t move. Nothing moved but the collapsing rubble and the wind and the omnipotent beast that rapidly loomed above him.

“Nothing left,” the beast spoke. No, not spoke. It didn’t move what seemed to be its mouth, it made no sound. But Kondraki heard it nonetheless. “Nothing left,” it communicated, and swayed above him in a black inky mass of immeasurable power.

“There will be nothing left,” it continued, and its horrible maw split wide into a grin as it crushed a body underfoot while approaching Kondraki, “and you will know what it is like to be pulled apart and changed, what it is to mean nothing.”

Kondraki had never died before, but as the beast finally came face to face, closed the distance between them, he was certain that he was experiencing it in that moment. Blood ran down his face, out of his ears and mouth, and he felt bones cracking under the pressure. He lost his balance, and fell to a kneel.

They say your life flashes before your eyes as you die, that it’s your lived life in a single instant. What Kondraki saw, though, was something entirely different. He saw his death before his eyes; a million ways, a million times over. He saw the deaths of everyone he loved, a million ways, a million times over. He saw him eat hot lead of his own volition, leaving his son to pick up the pieces. He saw himself swallowed by a swarm gone mad. Multiple assassinations. Once, quietly, in his sleep. 

He saw his sister, long past their parting ways, chased down in an alley. He saw his associate ripped to shreds by a phantom of a doe, impossibly large and radiating dark light. He saw his son, calling out to his father in just moments prior, crushed underfoot of the Beast That Loomed. He saw yet another coworker shattered into a million pieces, and the remaining body left to rot. He heard them all plead, except when they didn't. When it came too swiftly for them to even know what was coming.

He saw all of these things, and knew somehow, they were all true.  
And he saw all of these things, and knew still they were all false.

 

“Never again,” the Beast rumbled, and this time it was speaking, using that horrible maw and its radiant teeth, watching Kondraki with its impossible galaxy of eyes. “Never again. You will be cast to solitude. In stillness of death, madness blooms.”

Blood filled Kondraki’s lungs, and his vision went dark, but he knew he was still standing, somehow. He breathed as deeply as his lungs would allow, and grit his teeth. It burned all the way down as he sucked in mostly blood, partially air.

“What the FUCK are you talking about you sick greenie BASTARD!”

The Beast took pause, looking down at Kondraki curiously, like a cat considering a mouse. And like the cat, it swiped the man once, feather-light, and sent him crumpled into the dirt.Kondraki gasped, but all that came into his throat was more blood as The Beast loomed. 

Kondraki was all but blind, but he could see it so clearly as it pressed one of its amorphous limbs down onto his chest. The Beast was the void, with millions of millions of galaxies contained inside, a monster of eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes, all of them piercing, all of them Knowing. All of them pulling him apart from the inside out, searing his very soul.

“You are…. A funny man…” it commented idly, and pressed down on Kondraki, who didn’t even have the breath to scream. He felt something break, and he was astonished he was still living. He didn’t have the strength to thrash against the Beast, scarcely able to move.

And then, the Beast laughed. A true, full laugh, resonating with the fabric of reality as it was known. And it tore it apart as if it were soggy paper.

Kondraki tasted death on his tongue as he felt every atom in his body scatter in different directions, taking new paths. His body convulsed until it turned to dust, and suddenly.

Nothing.

\-----

It was dark when Kondraki woke up, full body shaking and in a cold sweat.


	2. West-Facing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kondraki wakes up after a perfectly normal dream, that wasn't a dream at all, and has a perfectly normal day at home, that was neither his home, nor normal.

He knew it was his bed by the feel of the blankets, the texture of the sheets. He knew it was his apartment because of the gun under his pillow which he never kept at his office bed, and he knew that it was still late in the night by the glow of the digital alarm clock at his bedside table, and how the water glass was still wet with condensation but had no ice left inside.

His body still ached where he had felt things break inside him, but as he ran his hands over his stomach, his legs, there was no damage. He breathed deep, and nothing resisted his breath aside from the damage done by decades of chronic smoking.

With a heaving sigh, Kondraki laid back down in his bed and stared at the ceiling for a while until he finally fell back to sleep, convinced it was all a bad dream.

But somehow, he knew better. This was no dream.

As Kondraki awoke, he stared at the window in puzzlement. The light had begun to filter through the window, and his room was uncovered from its dark veil. Structurally and content wise, Kondraki’s room seemed in a perfect state of repair, a model bedroom even. The problem wasn’t in the objects left inside however. It was the room itself.

As Kondraki looked at the window, the more he realized it was impossible. At least, compared to the room that he last remembered. The light filtered in wrong.. His room, situated in the west side of the complex, didn’t get direct sunlight first thing in the morning. However, here he was, with the clock blatantly displaying an early morning time, with light filtering directly onto his carpeted floor.

Kondraki sighed, concerned but convinced just for the moment that he was getting a little confused again. Probably not fully awake yet. To him it didn't really matter. At least not in this moment.

Kondraki, sleepy as hell and still very disoriented from the breach, walked into the living room. In the room he found a young man sleeping soundly on the couch, where clearly one did not exist in that place before.

Draven Kondraki rubbed his eyes. “Mmmh,” he grumbled, and turned over. Kondraki blinked, confused at the situation. Last he remembered, his son was long since moved out, and too busy with work to bother staying over a night. Kondraki stood there, disoriented and tired, staring at his half-sleeping son on the couch. His son seemed tired, finally stirring from his slumber and mumbling to his dad that he should get back to work soon. He didn’t move with urgency though, seeming more like he was acting on his workaholic tendencies than actually being scheduled to work.

“Go on back to sleep,” Kondraki encouraged,smiling a little and taking note of his sons clearly exhausted state. Draven nodded, and Kondraki decided that he too would go back to sleep. Yesterday was a long ass day, and he deserved a rest. Things were too complicated this morning, and it wasn’t even 8am yet.

Deciding that it was far too difficult at the moment to deal with Draven in any capacity, Kondraki just went back to his bedroom to get the sleep he decided on. Walking inside though, he shifted uneasily where he stood.

Everything looked wrong inside it. It seemed like someone had reached their hands in at every level and just tore the place apart, but then carefully put it all back together again, but not quite in the right way. Something was so, very wrong, but it was too early in the morning to be worth doing anything about. Kondraki just didn’t have that energy in him at that moment. He sighed, and crawled back into bed, vowing to take care of it when he  woke up.

He knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell what. And somehow, he knew this wasn’t urgent. As he drifted off back to sleep, Kondraki thought he felt the stare of a thousand little eyes watching him, judging.

Kondraki shuddered, but fell asleep regardless. He slept more soundly than he had in years, but felt the ever present eyes even in his dreams.

\-------

 

Kondraki woke slowly this time, relaxed about the fact that his room was both his and not his at all. He didn’t know why that it seemed so normal or okay to him, but it did nonetheless. He walked back out into the living room, where Draven had been sleeping. Only now, Draven wasn’t sleeping, having folded the blanket he was using and placed it carefully on his pillow.

Draven, having a bigger burst of energy that morning, decided he would make something to eat for him and his father. Kondraki looked puzzled, but didn’t protest; Draven was good at cooking, though didn’t do it often. At least, he didn’t do it often for _him._

Kondraki heard his son moving around in the kitchen, busy with whatever it was he was working on. He didn’t want to bother him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of things being somehow wrong. The conflict came when he realized that he didn’t really _dislike_ that it felt like things were a little off. It was like when your favorite soda changed its recipe just slightly, and the change didn’t make the drink any better or worse, just noticeably different. It was something neutral, that just needed a little getting used to.

He drifted around his apartment, not sure what to do with himself at the moment.Checking the date, he noted it was a saturday- Kondraki tried to not work on saturdays, it gave him a day off that he wouldn’t otherwise have. And so, after double checking his schedule, he just wandered into the kitchen to see if Draven needed any help.

Draven was working away, grating up potatoes furiously while other dishes he was working on cooked around him. He seemed focused, and Kondraki really didn’t want to distract him, so instead he moved to brew some coffee for the both of them. Typically, he drank the whole pot before he actually began the day, but hell he could make more.

It was so strange, having Draven back in his kitchen, in his home. Stranger still that he wasn’t drunk or hungover during his visit. The thought made him pause; he was fairly sure he had been drinking the night before, but it didn’t feel that way to him. Maybe he just slept it off well. He abandoned the line of thinking as soon as it began. Because Draven back home was strange, but felt right, and he didn’t want to ruin breakfast by brooding over the fact that his work had been coming first in his life even before his son left home, not with his son finally here and the two of them safe, and the breach was over and everything was okay, for once in their damn lives.

“Ow- fuck…” Draven muttered, his hand having slipped and scraped against the cheese grater he was using to grate the potatoes for hash browns. Realizing what he said, he froze up, hoping that his father didn’t hear, but he did. Kondraki just laughed, finally wandering over to where Draven was working.

“Cut your hand?” he asked, holding his out to Draven, offering to give him a once-over.

“Just scraped it,” he replied, examining his own hand and turning it over, as if the back of his hand would reveal some answer about what he did to his palm. “I don’t think it even broke the skin or anything, just wasn’t expecting it I guess.”  
  
“That’s good, I’d hate for you to be adding your hands to the hash,” Kondraki commented, and chuckled to himself as if that was an actually funny joke. Draven smiled a little bit.

“Yeah, I think I’d rather neither of us ate my hands,” he replied, and went back to grating the rest of the potato.

Kondraki nodded in agreement and drifted around the kitchen, poking around and trying to figure out something to do without having to ask. He preferred not to, it made him feel like he was following orders. Which he got enough of at work.

Thankfully, not long after, Draven spoke up. “Hey, would you mind grabbing some plates and all that? I gotta watch the hash browns or they’ll get burnt all to hell. I still can’t figure out how to get things to work without keeping a stupidly close eye on it.”

“Yeah no problem,” he replied, crossing the kitchen, opening up the cupboard to where he had always kept his dishes. He grabbed a couple of plates and set up the table for the two of them, bringing one of the plates over nere where Draven was so that he didn’t risk dropping food on the way. When he got back over to where Draven stood, the young man looked a little puzzled.

“Did you change your kitchen around?” he asked, gesturing  to the cabinets where his father had pulled the dishes from.

Kondraki raised an eyebrow. “Uh. No, Draven. It’s been this way since I moved in, you know I like my routine.”

Draven seemed to squint suspiciously at the cupboard, but he shrugged it off without much more further thought. He divided the breakfast among the two plates quickly, set them down on the table and walked over to make himself a coffee.

 When Draven sat down and started eating, there was a sort of loaded silence between them. It wasn’t unpleasant, just that something needed to be said. Kondraki, as per usual, didn’t address it. He didn’t like talking, and didn’t like dragging things out of Draven when he wasn’t forthcoming. Thankfully, the silence didn’t last too incredibly long.

 

“So there’s this guy at work,” Draven began quickly, on the tail end of a mouthful of hashbrowns.

 “Oh, so it’s boy trouble then,” Kondraki replied with a laugh.

 Draven choked on his coffee and sat forward. “No! Well, yes, but not like that!” He replied, going a little red. “I don’t _like_ the guy, that’s not the issue, in the slightest, in any way at all.”

"Doth protest too much, but go on.” 

Draven rolled his eyes. “Anyway, there’s this guy- stop laughing!- there’s this guy who’s on one of the other task forces, I don’t know which one, I don’t even know his name and I don’t really care. He’s just, annoying. He’s so annoying dad. And he like. He hits on _everyone,_ and just, I don’t know how to explain it, he’s just so obnoxious. All the time.”

 Kondraki raised his eyebrows and sat up a little bit. “He hasn’t been making you uncomfortable or anything, has he? Pulling any shit?”  
  
Draven shook his head. “I mean he’s hit on me before but I shut him down pretty fast, he’s not really my type? Mostly cause of how he acts. But he’s never made me _uncomfortable_ like you’re getting at, no. He’s just obnoxious.”

 Kondraki shifted back in his seat a little, slightly less on the attack now. “Well, have you reported him about it?”

 Draven shook his head. “It’s nothing _report_ worthy, its just. Annoying. Everything about him is annoying. I hate his stupid face.”

 “I know how that can be,” Kondraki replied, and got up to make himself another cup of coffee.

 "I wanna shove him in a locker.” Draven added, arms folded now.

 That made him chuckle a little bit. “Well don’t, then _you’ll_ be reported for assaulting your coworkers,” he reminded, and took a long sip of the hot drink.

 “Yeah, I know I know.” he replied, waving his hands, finishing off what was left on his plate and walking it over to the sink. “I’m not gonna do anything about it either really, I mean, he’s just annoying. Wanted to vent, I guess.”

 “Vent whenever you need,” Kondraki replied with a nod, leaning against the counter where the coffee pot sat, not bothering going far since he’d need a refill pretty soon.

 Draven smiled, walking back to the table to keep putting away dishes and things. “Thanks dad,” he replied, but didn’t say anything more. He seemed finished with the situation, and thinking about something. There was another loaded silence, but this one felt less urgent, and more warm. Neither one of them said anything more for the time being, but that was fine.

 

After a little while more of silence, Draven finally spoke. “I’m gonna head out,” he began, stretching a little bit as he walked. “Me and a few of the guys were gonna wander around town and find stuff to do.”

“Have fun,” Kondraki replied with a slight smile, giving his son a short wave. He was glad he kept Draven from wandering half asleep to work then; it would have probably ruined his day plans.

Draven was almost out the door when he stopped short, pausing. He took a breath and looked over his shoulder. “Hey, uh, dad?”

Kondraki looked up from his coffee and raised an eyebrow in response.

Draven hesitated, and gave his father a lopsided smile. “Thanks for. Yknow. Trying so hard, lately. It means a lot to me.” He didn’t wait for a response after that though, and just turned to head out the door, locking it behind him with his spare key.

Kondraki blinked. He wasn’t exactly sure what Draven had meant by that, actually. He didn’t remember doing anything… different, than usual. The closest he could guess was that he had been trying (and failing) to cut down on his smoking, but that couldn’t mean that much to Draven, could it? He didn’t know. It didn’t really matter though; Draven was happy, and that meant a lot to him. Whatever he was doing, Kondraki figured he’d just keep doing it then.

Another cup of coffee down, Kondraki decided it was about time he checked over his work email, just in case. It totally didn’t count as actually working if he was just skimming to make sure there were no emergencies. Or just responding to a few high priority messages. Totally not work. Absolutely not.

\--

 

Four or so hours later, Kondraki realized that he hadn’t blinked in a while, and rubbed at his eyes.

 

“Ugh, damn,” he muttered, and pushed his glasses up to blink a little harder. Tears ran down his face, and he sighed. Pain in the ass every time. After a few more hard blinks, the dryness finally went away, and Kondraki decided to get up from his computer, finally. No point in doing that again. 

And so he went from one spot reading endlessly, to another spot, reading just as endlessly. But this time, he wasn’t lying when he told himself it wasn’t work; he picked up an old worn book from the coffee table and dove right in. This had to be his sixth or seventh readthrough, but he always, always found value in re-reading a good book. He idly remembered that he heard a few of the younger researchers in the cafeteria picking on one of their own for reading  the same book endlessly; he made a note at the bottom of the page he was on to ask him to borrow it later. After all, if the kid liked it so much, it had to be good.

As Kondraki read, he felt a tension slowly leaving his body, as if finally whatever was stressing him out so much lately had finally been lifted from him. But it wasn’t; the Foundation was still exactly the same, his site was exactly where it was and he was still its director, but somehow, for what felt like the first time in forever, he could put it aside and really get lost in his reading.  He read on and off through the day, more on than off, taking a few breaks for coffee, a smoke, a snack or two, and the occasional hour long peek at his work email.

The day, as all days off did, went by extraordinarily quickly. As Kondraki noticed the sun going down, he sighed, figuring he should get something more substantial to eat than grazing on chips like he had been all day. He stretched, and went for his coat, deciding that he might as well just grab some fast food. No, it wasn’t the healthiest but it was fast and easy. As he got up, he looked back at his apartment. Something was nagging at him in his stomach, like he just needed to double check that his space was, in fact, still there.

And it was. The lighting was still wrong, like it was this morning. But it _felt_ less wrong, somehow. In fact, the longer he looked, the more little details he saw that were out of place. Chipping on the coffee table mysteriously missing in one or two places. Bookshelf clutter and bookends swapped places or missing entirely. One of his books, he noted, was paperback instead of hardcover; a decision he distinctly remembered being difficult for him at the time. They were all small things, details that only he himself would have noticed. Maybe Draven would have, had he spent more time at his father’s house. But all little, insignificant things.

Despite these facts, knowing all these things were out of place in front of him, Kondraki felt… almost at ease. Comfortable in his surroundings that were just so slightly off. Something was clearly wrong. But nothing _felt_ wrong. The things that were wrong that he noticed, and he absolutely noticed because Kondraki was a paranoid bastard who always noticed changes in his environment. But nothing felt suspicious, nothing felt amiss. In fact, it may even be a mistake to call these changes “something wrong”. They weren’t wrong, just different. Just a little change to the layout of the room. That’s all it was. A change.

Kondraki closed his door behind him, feeling like there was absolutely nothing wrong. The noted differences slipped from his mind as soon as they were out of his sight. As he took out his keyring and flipped them around on his finger- the one with the red rubber bumper was his office, the only silver one was to 408’s containment unit, the one between them the spare key to Draven’s apartment that he had given him- Kondraki realized idly that he couldn’t remember now what these changes were anymore. Yes, the books were different, but how? What about the table’s smooth surface was different? And just as before, this knowledge didn’t distress him at all. It didn’t even register that it should; it was more like he forgot the words to a song he had been trying to remember that he heard on the radio a few days ago for the first time. Not something important, something to be cast aside without paying it much mind.

 

Kondraki locked the door to his apartment, which faced east, and made his way down the west hallway.


End file.
